In Between The Moon And You
by amor-remanet
Summary: The angels leave Earth forever; Castiel stays behind. DeanxCas slash.


The angels left Earth forever on the first night of December 2012, a night ostensibly like any other — freezing cold and snow-covered.

When Zachariah dared to show his face at Camp Chitaqua, hardly anyone noticed a thing — in his private cabin, Chuck twitched, as if having a nightmare that he couldn't place, but he didn't rouse. Neither did Dean, curled up at Castiel's back, arm draped around his angel's waist and snoring on the back of Castiel's neck. Castiel noticed the flickering of the lights outside their cabin, and he heard the sound of rushing wings, but only because he wasn't sleeping anyway; the modafinil hadn't even begun to wore off yet, and, as he'd idly leafed through the pages of one of Chuck's unpublished manuscripts — still enough of an angel to expend a bit of grace and read in the dark, despite the limitations of Jimmy's body — Castiel had vaguely considered that he might have taken too much.

Wrapping himself up in Dean's parka, Castiel followed the noise out into the snow and the biting, dry December air — all the way around to the back of the cabin, until he found Zachariah standing there alone, inhabiting his vessel for one last time, wings outstretched and glimmering under the full moon. In his still-familiar grave voice, the one that said, This is hard on everyone, but I'm afraid that we've terminated your position, he explained that the angels were leaving Earth and going elsewhere — "Maybe we'll start over completely, make some new life to look after; maybe we won't… But thanks to your Mister Winchester's insistence on trying to solve this his way, Lucifer's all but won this planet. It's a fait accompli, at this point, Castiel…" Castiel did not point out that this was what Zachariah had said to Dean when bragging about the angels' chances in the Apocalypse, but through the haze of drugs and restlessness, the irony struck him as amusing. He even snickered. "Come on, brother," Zachariah implored, almost seeming earnest. "You don't belong here; you belong with your family."

"Yeah, some family you all are," Castiel huffed, idly scratching at the back of his neck. For all he'd been losing his angelic nature, piece by piece, for years now, the sensation of itchiness was still new to him — which didn't make it any less uncomfortable. "The only one of you winged dicks who has been to see me at all is Gabriel…" Zachariah furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to question this, but Castiel cut him off: "Yes, I am aware that you didn't know that he was hanging around — he is. And he isn't doing very well."

Zachariah scoffed, shaking his head. "Because you're in such a position to say that anybody else isn't doing well." Castiel protested this, wondering aloud what the Hell Zachariah had meant by that — and getting a dry, unfriendly chuckle in response. "I mean — look at yourself, little brother. You're slumming around some militarized summer camp, living in sin with the failed Michael Sword, sharing supplies with a bunch of trauma survivors and a ridiculous excuse for a prophet, drinking, doing drugs — you're an angel, Castiel, not some… filthy human. And you belong with your family. …Come with us. It'll be like it was — back before Lucifer and these people ruined everything."

Castiel glanced over his shoulder at the cabin, and thought of Dean, of how much he'd already lost in trying to save the world. He shook his head. "No. …I'm staying here."

And, with only a brief glimpse of regret on his face, Zachariah left. As he stood alone, at the outskirts of the light, Castiel looked up at the snowflakes that started plummeting from the sky.

Dean comes in from the latest hunt exhausted, wondering where in the Hell everyone's gotten off to — stretching out before him like the first Croatoan-riddled city they found, Chitaqua looks ghost-town empty underneath the blanket of stars. It makes sense, he guesses, that the Devil's plan for world domination comes down to a demon/zombie apocalypse. As much as he always tried to hide it, to be the more socially acceptable brother and not to be a "freak," Sammy always did have a taste for the morbidly appropriate stuff like that — destroying a bunch of complacent morons by turning them into literal zombies would've struck him as funny, in that dark, Trickster sort of way, that way Sam hated admitting to because it made him feel like a freak.

With a sigh, Dean does his evening rounds, checking up on everyone in their cabins — Elaine and Risa have nothing new to report from the time they kept watch on camp, Colby and Donahue work together to patch each other up, Jane hasn't seen anybody sick or anything, and since the angels left, Chuck hasn't really felt the urge to drink. "It just doesn't help anything," he mutters, when Dean asks him about the fact that the whole world's gone to Hell and it would've made more sense to find Chuck wasted and falling all over himself to puke. "I mean… there aren't any headaches, or angel voices, or flashes of light wrecking up the place… Everything's just empty."

Dean sighs, and nods, and tells Chuck to do inventory in the morning.

As he comes into his own cabin, though, Dean sees the worst sight Chitaqua has to offer, and it stuns him so badly that he barely has the time to appreciate this glimpse at Castiel's wings. A model city of empty liquor bottles litters the floor, some toppled over and some standing upright, and some in suspicious proximity to various translucent orange prescription bottles (every one of them empty, and for all the pills lying near the cracks in the floor, Dean's sure that two more, at least, found their way inside of Cas). Castiel doesn't stir, or seem to acknowledge Dean's presence at all — his feathers just rustle as he groans and nestles into the bed.

Dean pauses now, arms hanging limply at his side, and it takes him a moment to set his .45 on the floor so he doesn't accidentally fire it. All he wants to do is stare at those wings — he's only seen their shadows before, on the night that he first met Cas, and now, to actually look at them… When they're properly tended, he imagines that they're beautiful — longer than Cas is tall, though Dean can't quite guess by how much, and white with the faintest hints of a sheen that reminds him of Cas's big blue eyes. What throws Dean off is how rumpled and out-of-place they look — like they're trying to be perfect, but like they just can't be bothered to rearrange their feathers properly or take out the tangles, and Dean doesn't know if he should look at something else or not, but the fact is that he doesn't want to.

"They aren't coming back, Dean," Cas mutters, staring out the window, hardly moving, even to breathe (and despite Dean's best attempts at being quiet). "They're gone. Forever."

"Yeah, well…" With a heavy sigh, Dean puts his bag down by the door and crouches down to get his boots off. "Your brothers always were a big old bag of dicks." Cas mumbles something that Dean can't quite make out — he hears something that sounds like I'm nothing anymore (though it could've been something about Zachariah hunting boars) — but that he thinks is some kind of scathing indictment of somebody, and the way Cas's wings twitch seems irritated. "…That said," Dean replies with a shrug, even though he doesn't know what he's responding to. "…What's up with the wings?"

"Who needs them?" Cas sighs. "They're practically useless. I doubt they can even get me across the camp."

Dean kneels by the edge of Cas's wings, and strokes his fingers over one coarse patch, pauses there to untangle two feathers and put them back into their proper alignment again. Cas gives a little moan, one that catches in his throat and comes up despite his resistance to the idea — the kind of noise he's only made during sex before. Seeing his hand move for the front of his jeans, Dean smirks and fingers another feather. "I think they're good for more than just flying, Cas," he says, meaning, instead, I need you.


End file.
